“Are we in the clear? Absolutely not.” Interior Health resists complacency even as COVID-19 cases wane

KAMLOOPS — The Omicron variant of COVID-19 has rapidly changed the pandemic because it’s more contagious and has a shorter incubation period.

Contact tracing and testing are no longer useful tools for health authorities to control the virus, so they are shifting more towards how they would manage the flu — but it’s not as simple as it sounds.

“There’s seasonal influenza and pandemic influenza. We’re definitely more on the pandemic side,” Interior Health Medical Health Officer Dr. Carol Fenton says.

Fenton says restrictions on gatherings, mask mandates and vaccination requirements are still necessary to keep COVID-19 numbers down and avoid overwhelming hospitals. She says health authorities are learning about the pandemic as they go along, which is a complicated process.

“We’re all scrambling because the information is changing, the testing is getting overwhelmed, we’re figuring out how to manage locally, but then how to keep it consistent across the province. That generated a lot of confusion,” she says.

Adding to the confusion are recent talks about an “endemic” — the transition to a more manageable virus — at some of the province’s latest COVID-19 updates.

Dr. Fenton says don’t get too excited, as an endemic depends on general susceptibility, severity, hospitalization rates and strain on the healthcare system, and what tools we have to control the virus. Due to Omicron, there’s no specific end in sight.

“Even people with past infections or people who have two doses of vaccine, they have less immunity or protection from new infection than ever before. We’re not really getting to that point,” Dr. Fenton says.

She says the more the virus can circulate, the more opportunities it has to form a new variant — which is why getting vaccinated is important.

Up until recently, new variants were only seen in countries that did not have widespread vaccination.

“Now we’re having widespread transmission even in countries that are highly vaccinated. So we have less control of the virus than we have previous. What does that mean? Time will tell. We can’t predict it at this point. But are we in the clear? Absolutely not,” she adds.